Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- The Search for the Red Num

Here's yet another in the series of stories I wrote in my mid-elementary-school years.  This one in particular was one I started to write pretty early, but didn't go back and finish until more than a year later.  As such, it sat unfinished on my computer for a while and some of the things I had planned early on ended up not making it into the final version of the story at all.

This is also the first story to specifically be labeled as a "Numnums" story -- specifically, the full title according to the copy of it I still have is "Numnums: The Search for the Red Num."  My elementary-school-era stories ended up separated into "Numnums" and "Supernum" stories around this point, with the "Numnums" stories being defined by Supernum either not being present or not being the main character of the story.  There were a lot more Supernum stories than plain ol' Numnums stories, of course, since this was around the point where Supernum became the main character I wrote about.  Anyway... on to this old thing I wrote when I was... well, I'm not entirely sure of the timeline on this one but it was probably finished when I was around 10, and started a year or more before that.

One day on Nummorro, Nummy the Numnum was hunting for Kirbys to put in his Kirbymeat ravioli. As soon as he had caught and killed one Kirby, his phone rang.  It was Supernum!!  He told Nummy about the Red Num, a Numnum that had been hidden for 1000 years, and about the bad guys that were trying to get it. They were: Yuckow Food, Marching Milde, and Killer Kirby! Nummy knew they had to be stopped, but he didn't know how a wimpy Num like him would ever be able to beat an army of tough badguys! Nummy thought that if Supernum came with him, he would have a better chance at beating the badguys, but Supernum told Nummy that if more than one Numnum goes to get it, only one of the Nums will survive. Before Nummy  left, he heard Supernum say "Remember  that only one Num will make it. If other Nums are there, don't fight any badguys, just run as fast as you can and grab the Red Num." Remembering Supernum's words, Nummy starts the adventure that every Num will be talking about 1000 years from now, The Search For The Red Num.

In this story, the main character is Nummy -- the Numnum master chef who owns his own restaurant (called Nummy's, of course) and who usually served as the mentor and advice-giving figure to Supernum himself in other stories.  In this one, oddly, that seems to be flipped around -- Supernum somehow knows all these details about the Red Num which Nummy doesn't, for no apparent reason.  Another odd bit: Supernum apparently counts as a Numnum for the purposes of the Red Num's "only one Numnum can make it out of there alive" rule, despite actually being a transformed human.

I also remember that in the original version of the story, when I first started writing it, the list of bad guys seeking the Red Num was a good bit longer -- including some big names like the Alligator Teacher, as well as probably at least a few that I've completely forgotten by now.  I apparently went back and removed those extra names later after the story was finished and none of them actually made an appearance.

Also not making an appearance: any other Numnums seeking the Red Num, despite the warnings early on that if multiple Numnums go after it, only one of them can survive.  I'm not sure if I had originally planned for other Numnums to be present and just forgot about that or if that was just a reason to have Supernum conveniently left out of the story.

Nummy hated this part of the trail because a Parupoo could be hiding anywhere, ready to come out of the ground and squish him.  "This forest is creepy." Nummy said.  As soon as he said that, five Creepy Centipedes jumped out of the bushes and attacked him! "Did you say creepy?" they asked in their creepy, centipedey voices. Nummy was frightened by the Centipedes and ran deeper into the forest.

"Creepy Centipede" was apparently a specific species of centipede living on Nummorro back in the elementary school years.  I was probably thinking of those gray, skittery house centipedes that really creeped me out back then.

But the Centipedes were hungry for Numnum meat and followed him. Running from the hungry Centipedes, Nummy tripped over a Kirby that was stuck in the sticky, mucky rutoo on the forest floor. "Help me!" said the Kirby. He was sinking deeper into  the rutoo. "If I help you, will you come with me to find the Red Num?" Nummy asked. The Kirby said yes and Nummy pulled as hard as he could and pulled the Kirby out. He pulled so hard that rutoo flew everywhere, hitting the Centipedes like fireballs and killing four of them. The Centipede that survived thought Nummy was a Rutoo-Tossing Centipede Eater and ran out of the forest in two seconds.

And here's the introduction of Nummy's only ally during this trip, a K'hyurbhi who doesn't actually get a name mentioned until later on in the story.  He's inconsistently referred to as "the Kirby" and sometimes just plain "Kirby" (despite him never being intended to be Nintendo's Kirby at all... this is reminding me a bit of how the Yuckow Foods in some of my other old stories were called "Yuckow Food" as if that was their name) before finally getting the name "Kirb" sometime later on.  Nowadays that name would be spelled "Kurb," and he'd have more of a personality and be able to use Kihlah... but none of that had been developed yet at the time this old thing was written.

I'm not sure exactly why I referred to the rutoo hitting the centipedes as being "like fireballs," though I'm guessing I was probably thinking of Mario fireballs at the time for whatever reason.  This also establishes the existence of another Nummorrian species, the centipede eater, which I never actually drew or made up any more details of until years later.  (They're no longer known for tossing rutoo, though.)

Nummy went on, and eventually they came to a clearing with a huge house in the middle of it. The first thing Nummy noticed was that the house was surrounded by rutoo, not grass or Yumma Weeds. Nummy decided to enter the house and see who lived there, even though he didn't know anything about that part of the forest.

First sign that a house is suspicious: they have a giant rutoo pit around it rather than a grassy lawn or some other sort of plants.  Also, this may be the first-ever mention of the Yumma Weed, the plant that Yum is made from, also known in Khurbyish as yummaguri.

     As soon as Nummy entered the house, he noticed that something was cooking on the stove.  When he looked to see what it was, it jumped out at him, missed, and almost hit the Kirby that was with him! "Hahaha!" it said. "I am Yuckow Food!" it said. "He's Yuckow Food, the first badguy to try to stop us from getting the Red Num!" said the Kirby. The Food attacked again, this time hitting the Kirby right in the face. "EEW! Get it off me!!" said the Kirby.  Nummy knew that if he didn't get it off fast, it would eat Kirby!!  It's a good thing Nummy brought his Yummo Food (made by squishing and frying the leaves of the Yumma Weed) to stop the Yuckow Food from eating Kirby. Since Yum was poisonous to Yuckows, the Yuckow Food fell right off of the Kirby and landed right in a huge pile of rutoo right outside of the house. As the Yuckow Food sank into the rutoo, a huge SlobberWorm came out of it and ate the Yuckow Food in one bite.

Originally, the Yuckow Food (and another character who shows up a bit later) spoke in my early attempt at representing Khurbyish -- which was just English written in the "Symbol" font, which made it a jumbled-up pile of Greek letters.  Once again, the Yuckow Food is referred to as if "Yuckow Food" was its name as an individual in addition to that being the name of its species.  There's also an explanation of why Yum hurts/kills yuckfood-based creatures, and the introduction of another Nummorrian species, the slobberworm.  Apparently slobberworms can eat yucky stuff without any issues.

"We'd better check out the bedroom." said Nummy. So Nummy and Kirby went to the bedroom and saw Christy, who was eating a plate full of fried Numnums, roasted Kirbys, Blurby burritos, and Yuckow-baked Blue Nums with rutoo sauce. As she had just finished the last fried Num, Nummy and Kirby burst into the room yelling "Oowa oowa oowa oowa!" Christy screamed and tossed the rutoo sauce so high it splatted on the ceiling and dripped down on her head. She was so mad that her arms turned shorter, she got fatter, her eyes changed, her mouth rounded, and she grew little marks on her cheeks. She was turning into a Kirby!

And here's the second appearance of Christy, though chronologically it would have to be her first appearance since she's killed in The Numnum Club.  Also here is the odd referencing of the young K'hyurbhi as "Kirby" as though that was his name (even though it's later revealed to be Kirb), and an example of bad guys eating yucky food with the "yuckow-baked Blue Nums."

The random "battle cry" the two of them yell out when charging into Christy's room was borrowed from a radio show that I frequently heard on my trips to and from school around this time, which if I remember right was called something along the lines of "John Boy and Billy."  I can't remember the context of it now, but they would occasionally yell out something like "oowa-oowa-oowa-oowa!" during the show.

Oh, and Christy is magically transforming into a Kirby, which is apparently a thing she does now.  There's a reason I say "Kirby" rather than "K'hyurbhi" even now for this particular transformation, which you'll see in a little bit if you keep reading.

After she was finished turning into a Kirby, she began sucking in everything in the house. She tried to suck in Nummy, but everyone knows Kirbys can NEVER suck in a Numnum. But Kirbys can suck in other Kirbys, so Nummy had to hold on to the Kirby to keep him from being sucked in. When she finally stopped sucking in, Kirb tossed an onion (Christy hates onions) right into her mouth.  "Hey Christy!! Eat This!" he said. "Yucko! Yucko! EEW! I hate onions! Yuck!" she said. As Christy gulped down the very spicy onion, she turned back into a cute, little, wimpy girl.

Yep... when Christy transforms into a Kirby, she actually gains the "vacuum" power that Nintendo's Kirby has and starts sucking in everything around here.  Numnums are apparently immune to this power, so Nummy is safe... but Kirb (who finally gets his name mentioned here!) is in danger of being pulled in.  I'm not sure why I had Numnums being completely immune to the vacuum-sucking ability that Christy had, but it was probably something to do with Num Power.

And Christy is defeated by... her own onion allergy, which is apparently strong enough to undo her magical Kirby transformation and revert her to human form as well as knocking her unconscious (though she doesn't die, at least as far as the story says.  Though if she did, that would mean she'd get two unexplained resurrections. XD)  I'm not sure why Kirb is randomly carrying an onion at this point, but he is.  Was he planning on coming into Christy's house and poisoning her with an onion before he ended up stuck in the rutoo, or what?

"Let's  get out of here." said Kirb. "Yeah. There isn't anything important in here anyway." said Nummy. They didn't know it, but their fight with Christy had woken up some Parupoos that were sleeping in one of the rutoo piles outside of the house. As Nummy and Kirb left, one of the Parupoos peeked out of the rutoo and saw them. The Parupoo was mad at them for waking it up, so it came out of the rutoo and tried to hit Nummy by throwing a PooBall at him. But Nummy saw the PooBall and ducked under it. Nummy saw the PooBall coming, but the other Parupoo didn't, so when he came out of the ground to attack, he got knocked out by the flying PooBall. The Parupoo that was left had just thrown his last PooBall, so he had no way to attack and hid under the rutoo until Nummy and Kirby had left.

Pooballs are not actually made of poo these days (they're actually partially-digested rutoo -- Parupoos are burrowing worms, so they end up ingesting little bits of rutoo as they dig through it -- hardened into a weaponized lump), though at the time I wrote this story I probably intended them to be.  These Parupoos are apparently not minions of Killer Kirby or some other bad guy like those that appear in other stories, but just random Parupoos who got pissed off at being woken up.

And Kirb is randomly referred to as just "Kirby" again, after three uses of his actual name in a row.  Whoops.

Nummy noticed a restaurant on the side of the road, so he decided to eat there and see how good the food is. As soon as he went in, he saw the name of the restaurant: The Milde Cafe.   "The Milde Cafe. Who is Milde?" Nummy thought.  Nummy decided to look at the menu and see what they have for him to eat.   

Apparently Nummy has already forgotten that one of the bad guys mentioned at the very beginning of the story was Marching Milde.  Who, as mentioned in my post on The Numnum Club, was basically ripped directly from Yoshi's Island.  In this story though, I apparently at least tried to differentiate him a bit from his Yoshi's Island counterpart... by making him a chef, randomly.

And I only just now realized that Christy was not mentioned among the list of bad guys searching for the Red Num back at the start.  So apparently Nummy and Kirb just kinda barged into her house and knocked her out with an onion for no reason.  Whoops.

_____________ The Milde Cafe_____________
    _______________Menu________________
 Lunch:                         Supper:
Fried Numnums             Yucked Chicken
Roasted Kirbys            BeefYucko meat
Blurby Burritos           Yuck Food meat
Yum And Yuck Special     Yummo Food meat
Yuck Salad               Cheese Ravioli
Num Sandwich             Super Sandwich
Barf Burger              The Big PooYum
BeefYucko Chomps      Kirbymeat Ravioli
Sausage Pizzyuck      Numnum Ravioli
Yuckfood Pizzyuck        Grilled Fishies
Beef and Num Pizzyuck   Roasted Bread
_______________________________________
Kentucky Fried Kirbys  Bucket, Plate
________________________________________
Grilled Nums           Fried Fishies
_______________________________________
            Appetizers:
           CheeseSticks
Drinks:      Yums           Deserts:
             MiniNums        Snacko
Milk          Fishy Heads     Cake
Mello Yello     Yucks          Choco-Num
Dr. Parupoo    Salad Yucko   Chocolate Ants
Numnum Juice   Parupoo Yum 
CoffeeTea!     Gooey Tato    BIG Snacko!
________________________________________

Yep, this story included a full menu, consisting mostly of all kinds of really gross foods like "Yucked Chicken," "Barf Burger," and "The Big PooYum."

"I guess that's where Christy gets her food." he thought. Nummy decided that he wanted Kirbymeat ravioli and Mello Yello with a side of Cheese Sticks.  It was the yummiest meal he could get.  First, he ate the Cheese Sticks, then nummed up the ravioli, then gulped down the Mello Yello. "MMM mmm, yummy!" he said. The waiter came by and said "I hope you enjoyed your meal, Numnum, because it will be the last one you have after you meet Marching Milde, the manager of the Milde Cafe!!"  "Oh No!" Nummy thought. "Marching Milde!! You have a Num that would like to be eaten by you!" the waiter said. Marching Milde rushed out of the kitchen yelling "Mmmmm, Numnums! Yummy!"

And now Nummy remembers the name "Marching Milde."  Apparently just "Milde" didn't make it obvious enough for him, or something.

Nummy could throw a table at Milde, but he might bounce it back with his rubbery skin. Then Nummy got an idea. He could lure Milde into the kitchen, then stand on the edge of the huge pot with lava in it (which was used to cook the spicy Fire Nums) and have Milde jump to attack him, but fall into the lava and be turned into Kentucky Fried Milde. Just as he thought, Marching Milde followed Nummy to the kitchen. But instead of jumping at Nummy, he poured the lava out and it flowed like a river through the restaurant with Nummy running from it. As soon as the lava got outside, it mixed with the rutoo and disapeared. But Milde wanted Numnums for lunch and  ran after Nummy. As soon as Milde stepped outside, he sank deep into the rutoo.

A random thing that makes this bit make a little more sense -- in my elementary school years, Nummy randomly had arms in addition to legs (back when most Numnums had neither.)  So when he thinks of throwing a table at Marching Milde, that means picking one up with his hands, not grabbing it in his mouth or something like that.  This also makes it pretty clear that Nummy is no slouch in terms of strength even if he's far behind the super-powerful characters like Supernum -- being able to pick up a table and throw it isn't something a regular human could really do.

Apparently Christy isn't the only one who dies and then mysteriously comes back to life -- Marching Milde just sank into some lava-infused rutoo, which implies that he probably died, and yet in The Numnum Club (which has to take place after this story) he's completely fine.  Whoops.

       Nummy would never go out of the restaurant without leaving the tip, so he did that and then left. As he walked past the clusters of Muckpoo Plants and Crakkunut Trees, he saw a cute Numbunny jump out from behind a Muckpoo Plant.  As soon as it jumped out, a sharp flying sword flew at it and killed it.  It looked just like the sword that Pototo (who was not bad, but hated Numnums) used to kill Numnums. "Pototo Smash! Throw you in the trash! Oh what a poopy Yuck!"  Pototo said as he jumped off the top of a huge Crakkunut Tree. Pototo picked up his sword and the dead Numbunny.  "Hahaha! I see Nummy, the Numnum that  is looking for the Red Num!  I think I will just kill him for my little potato friends!" he said. Nummy hid behind a tree. When he looked at the bark, he noticed a strange language carved into it. Above all of the strange language, Nummy saw these words: Chart Of Kirbyish Words And Letters.

During this point in the story, Kirb mysteriously vanishes and is not mentioned again for a while.  I'm not sure why.  I'm pretty sure this part of the story was changed at least once -- the "Pototo is not bad, but hates Numnums" thing seems like something that would have been added in later, while in the original I just randomly made Pototo into a bad guy for some reason.  Pototo's words here were originally written in the Symbol font like the Yuckow Food's from before, and the "Chart of Kirbyish Words and Letters" (actually just letters...) was just a way of translating that early attempt at Khurbyish into English so you could see what was being said.

I'm not sure why Khurbyish was "a strange language" that Nummy was unfamiliar with at this point, but I think that's just down to my elementary-school self not having thought about things much yet and just making everyone speak English by default.

    Nummy read the chart. He noticed it was easy to understand after he read the chart. But looking at the chart, he forgot about Pototo and almost got hit by his flying sword. "Yikes!" Nummy said. Pototo jumped at Nummy and tried to get his sword back, but Nummy was already pulling the sword out of the ground. As soon as Nummy got it out, he started to swing it at Pototo and, if he was lucky, hit him and get him to go away. Nummy hit Pototo with the sword with a loud "SHICK!!" sound. Pototo knew his punch was much wimpier than Nummy's sword, so he ran away.

Apparently Nummy with Pototo's sword is too much for Pototo without his sword to handle.  Oh, and Nummy randomly doesn't have the sword anymore after this one scene -- or at least, it's never mentioned again.  Of course, we're coming up on the point where I had stopped writing this for a while and only much later went back to finish it, so inconsistencies coming up probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise.

Nummy followed the trail. He noticed that some of the Muckpoo Plants were smushed down or broken. Then he saw that the Crakkunuts on the trees were cracked open and the Snackonuts were half-eaten. Their Snacko juice was spilled everyehere.  He saw footprints on the trail in front of them. He saw a sign beside the road. It said "Milde Cafe: Go South. Pleco Land: Go East.  RedNum Cave: Go North a Long way." Nummy decided to go North to the RedNum Cave. Nummy was now only inches from getting the Red Num. What he didn't know was that Killer Kirby was getting the Red Num to use against Nummy!

And here's the cutoff point between "stuff I wrote at first" and "stuff I went back and finished later."  Specifically, the directions to various places on the sign were the last things I had written down for a while.  Originally, there was going to be a dragon in this story (I believe it was a Julia Dragon like the one in The Numnum Club, if I'm remembering right), and that was why there were footprints on the trail and half-eaten nuts on the nearby trees.  But when I came back to this story after a while, I ditched that idea and jumped straight ahead to the Cave of the Red Num instead.

The sign even says "go north a long way" to get to the Red Num Cave... and yet Nummy gets there almost instantly after finding the sign.  D'oh. >_<

Just seconds before Killer Kirby powered himself up to fight Nummy, the Kirby barged in and kicked Killer Kirby right on the butt! But to Killer Kirby, it was more like someone tapping him on the butt. As Killer Kirby gulped down the Kirby, Nummy ran in and grabbed the Red Num. But now Nummy had to beat Killer Kirby and get out of the Red Num Cave. Nummy didn't know how to use the Red Num, so he just aimed its mouth at Killer Kirby (still eating the Kirby) and.. well, he just held it in his hand and kept aiming it at Killer Kirby.

Kirb reappears!... and randomly loses his name again, becoming just "the Kirby."  And he may or may not be dead at this point, since Killer Kirby is apparently a cannibal and is trying to eat him.  But Nummy has the Red Num, which means this story's just about over now...

In about 20 seconds, a laser shot out of the Red Num's mouth and hit Killer Kirby. As soon as the laser hit Killer Kirby, somewhere at cub scout camp a huge rock moved out of a huge hole and Killer Kirby was squished into it. The rock covered the hole, trapping Killer Kirby! Later, Eddie made a remote control for the trap. It was shaped just like a minature Killer Kirby. And if it got broken, so would the rock. And if that happened, Killer Kirby would escape.

...the Red Num doesn't give Nummy the power to fight Killer Kirby, of course, but instead makes it possible to seal him away.  This part had to have been written during the summer of my 4th grade year or slightly afterward, as it wasn't until that year that I had ever gone to Camp Shenandoah (referred to as just "Cub Scout camp" here) and made the clay Killer Kirby statue referenced here.  I actually still have it to this day, and it hasn't ever been broken (unlike in these stories, where of course it breaks after a while and Killer Kirby escapes.)

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- The Numnum Club

Here's another very old story that I still have a copy of -- more recent than How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy, but probably not by much as I'm pretty sure this one was also written when I was in 3rd grade.  While this one wasn't repeatedly edited over the years like that story was (as far as I can remember), it's still full of weird inconsistencies; this is at least partly because I'm pretty sure I wrote part of it, abandoned it for a couple months or so, and then later came back and finished it having forgotten some of the details of the earlier parts.  And, being 7 years old or so, I didn't think to just read them over first, apparently. XD

One day Eddie was riding on the bus and going home from school. He was looking for kids to be in the Numnum Club. He was asking 2 girls if they wanted to be in the Club. They said no. "They're just stinkers that my Hypnotized Sea Urchins will eat." thought Eddie. But these were no ordinary school girls. They were two of the toughest badguys Eddie would ever fight.

Or rather, one of them was a moderately tough bad guy and the other would never be mentioned again, not even in this very story.  Yeah, the second girl -- who this introductory paragraph implied would be an important character later on -- seems randomly vanish after this point, with only the first of the two reappearing.  I can't even remember who Girl #2 was supposed to be, actually.

Also, apparently Eddie has an army of hypnotized sea urchins, for some odd reason.  Specifically, this refers to the Sea Urchin in the old NES game Clu Clu Land, which I had recently played for the first time.  That's a recurring pattern in my old stories -- random, blatant references to stuff I liked at the time.  Sometimes they were changed around to a point where they became their own thing only loosely inspired by the original (like "Kirbys" that weren't pink and didn't have Kirby's power-copying ability, which later developed their own unique set of traits as a species and even later became K'hyurbhis, sharing nothing with Kirby but his general body shape... and even that not 100% now that they have feet with toes rather than red lumps), but most of the time in the early stories I just threw them in completely unchanged.  While I still do slip references to other things into my stuff, I actually slip them in now rather than just "wham, there's a random character/enemy/item/etc. from this game I played recently."

As Eddie came home, he noticed all of the cars his parents owned were gone. A note was tied to the doorknob. It showed a picture of a Numnum with a strange sword Eddie had never seen before stabbed through it. He decided to ask the Smartest Numnum about the sword. "It looks like an Ancient Kirbyish NumKiller." said the SmartNum. "What! Kirbyish! The Kirbys! They're the enemies of the Numnums!" said Eddie. "Who would know where the Kirbys had this?" asked Eddie. "I don't know" said the SmartNum. The next day, Eddie found out that the 2 girls were the ones who found the sword. "Uh-oh,  no wonder they didn't want to be in the Numnum Club!" Eddie thought.

Another thing that tended to happen in the old stories: characters are introduced in one story, made to seem importantish, and then never appear again.  That's the case with the "Smartest Numnum" that Eddie goes to for advice here, who is never so much as mentioned in any other story.

I'm not sure how Eddie knew that the two girls (oh wait, Girl #2 does get mentioned again! well, once) were the ones who found a Numkiller sword and, by extension, probably the ones who left the note on the door... but considering that they'd all be elementary school kids at this time, they probably were bragging about finding a sword during lunch or something.

Also, notice the "cars are gone (which means parents were kidnapped)" thing mentioned here.  Just like Girl #2, this element of the story is never mentioned again.  By the end of the story everything just kind of randomly goes back to normal, apparently.  Later stories even feature Eddie's parents (and one of their cars, even), so they clearly didn't just stay missing.  As I mentioned above, apparently I just forgot some of the details of this story's earliest bits when I was writing the later parts.  Whoops.

Eddie secretly got off the bus at one of the girls' houses in the afternoon, but he forgot to bring his Num Coin. "Ugh, she's even got a pet Fat Kirby. Now I've got to get past that stupid Kirby too!" thought Eddie. Since Eddie brought his KirbyPopper, he easily killed the Kirby. In a hidden room on the side of the house, the girl kept her Kirbyish weapons. Another sword like the one that was stabbed through the note. A Yuckow Sword. A set of Kirby Bombs. All kinds of them. Then he looked in the backyard.

Forgetting to bring your Num Coin is a pretty bad mistake to make.  Of course, Eddie usually wouldn't need it at school and he hadn't planned on sneaking off to one of the girls' houses to investigate when he left home that morning, so it does sort of make sense that a kid wouldn't think to bring it along in that situation.

The "Kirby Popper" was one of those random items mentioned in a few stories I wrote back then, and unlike most it actually appeared more than once.  It was basically just a sharp thing that you could jab into a Kirby which would cause it to "pop" and die.  Which didn't make a whole lot of sense considering that the "Kirbys" in my stories didn't actually have the ability to inflate and fly like Nintendo's Kirby did (not even this early on), and just poking Kirby with a sharp thing wouldn't kill him anyway... but eh, I was 7 years old when I wrote this.

     Standing in the backyard, looking straight at Eddie, was a huge Julia Dragon. "Uh-oh, this time I'd better use my Num Gun or I'll be Eddie soup!" thought Eddie. While Eddie was looking for his Num Gun, three more dragons crept up behind him. There was a Baby Dragon, a Num Dragon, and a Big Dragon. "Yum!" said all of the dragons. "Taste the Yummo Food!" said Eddie as he stuffed the baby dragon's mouth with Yummo Food. The baby dragon was dead, but there were three more left. The Big Dragon swung its huge tail, but Eddie jumped out of the way. Eddie found the Num Gun and used its Numnum Wave on the big dragon.

This is the only one of my old stories where dragons make an appearance, with the exception of the Julia Dragon, which later on became a transformation that the actual Julia could make... but apparently in this story it's just a random monster.  Apparently in the early stories, the Num Gun was a separate item from the Supernum transformation (unlike the Numnum Sword and Num Armor and various gadgets, which only appeared when Eddie transformed) and Eddie could carry it around with him even when he wasn't in Supernum form.  Also, he apparently brought a gun and a sharp thing to school with him but left the Num Coin, which probably wouldn't get confiscated by school people if it was found, at home.  Whoops.

This is one of those odd old stories where stuffing a monster's mouth with Yum randomly kills it even though it isn't even a yuckfood-based creature which should be harmed by Yum.  Apparently baby dragons only like yucky food, or something.

The dragon was washed away by the Numnum Wave.   Now only the Julia Dragon and the Num Dragon remained. But they were tougher than the other dragons. Eddie killed the Num Dragon by feeding it Yummo Food. Then the Julia Dragon ran away. Eddie was relieved to notice there were no dragons left. He went into the normal-looking house, expecting some kind of badguy to jump out at him. He looked in the kitchen. Something was cooking on the stove. It was Yuckow Food! He immediately threw Yummo Food on it. The yuckow food was killed by the Yum that Eddie threw. In the living room, Eddie didn't see any badguys. Next he went up to spy on the girl's room. Then he found a hole in the wall.

And once again, another dragon is killed by... force-feeding of yummy food.  Apparently it's not just the babies who only eat yucky stuff, I guess.  And the Julia Dragon runs away rather than fighting at all -- which makes it a little unclear as to whether this was the actual Julia in Julia Dragon form or just a random monster.

And another Yuckow Food appears, only to be almost instantly killed by having Yum thrown onto it.  This time, the Yuckow Food is actually referred to as "the Yuckow Food" rather than just being called "Yuckow Food" as thought that was its name... well, the second time it's mentioned, anyway.  The first time it's called "Yuckow Food" in a name-ish way.  Apparently Yuckow Food (capitalized) was the name of all yuckow foods (lowercase) back then, or something.

The hole was a secret cave! He went in and walked a very long way. He noticed baby Kirbys crawling across the floor of the cave. When he finally got out of the cave, he was in a forest. "This must be the Roarasaur Forest!" thought Eddie. But he had forgotten about what lived in the forest: The Roarasaurs! The Roarasaurs were more dangerous than Big Kirbys and were bigger than Big Dragons. Just as Eddie started to remember that, a Roarasaur was sneaking up behind him! He heard it roaring, and after a few moments, turned around with the Num Gun. But since the Roarasaur was neither a Dragon or Barney, he didn't know what to use on it. Roar! Roar! It roared and roared some more until Eddie decided to run. It's a good thing Roarasaurs didn't run fast, because if they did, Eddie would be Roarasaur food by now. Eddie outran it, but he was still in the forest.

"More dangerous than Big Kirbys" doesn't exactly make them sound all that dangerous, considering that Eddie was able to kill one effortlessly with his Kirby Popper earlier in this very story.  Though that was a Fat Kirby rather than a Big Kirby, so I guess there could be a difference in danger level between the two.

 He finally got to Nummy's, which was just behind the forest and where he had left his Num Coin. He planned to trap Christy, somehow. But how would he catch the leader of the badguys? He didn't know. But he would try. He called for Nummy, the manager of Nummy's, and asked him if he knew what could trap Christy. "I think a food fight will get her. But not just you're everyday, Yuck-Vs.-Yum foodfight. A special one." said Nummy. "A Yummo foodfight.  I'll call Yummo Food. He's the best at foodfights. He even beat that Yuckow Food that attacked FoodTown. Kersplat!!" said Nummy. So Nummy called Yummo Food, and he came to Nummy's to plan the foodfight. They knew it would be hard, but they knew how they would do it.

And finally, nearing the end of the story, the girl's name finally gets mentioned.  Well, the one who actually appears in the story past the first paragraph, anyway -- Girl #2, it seems, will remain a mystery for all time.  Anyway, Christy (who as of 2010 has a full name, Christy Telamora) is referred to as "the leader of the bad guys" here, which is a little odd.  Looking back at other stories I wrote, it seems that there is a time period where Killer Kirby would be out of the picture due to being sealed away, so I guess this story could take place in that gap... but still, a random human girl being promoted up to "Leader of All Bad Guys on Nummorro" all of a sudden seems a little strange, especially when you consider that she's not particularly smart and can't really fight all that well (at least in this story -- in a later appearance she seems to have improved a bit.)

Also, here's the first and only appearance of "Yummo Food" in my old stories.  He's basically a red Yuckow Food, made out of yummy food rather than yuck (because back then, Yuckow Foods were literally made of disgusting cafeteria food rather than just being alien blob monsters that only smelled like it.)  Apparently he fought a Yuckow Food in a place called "FoodTown" at some point, though I don't remember if that was referencing another story or just a random backstory bit that I never expanded on.

While Nummy and Yummo Food were planning the foodfight, Christy was getting her toughest badguys ready. She didn't know about the foodfight, but she suspected that Nummy would probably attack soon. Some of the toughest badguys she had were: Killer, MARCHING MILDE, The Dummest Num on Earth, and Blubbery Blurby.   Once Nummy, Yummo Food, Eddie, and the Numnums were ready, they got a lot of Yum Food Bombs and some rubber yuck food (used to trick the bad guys later on). They had their weapons and were ready to begin the Yummo Foodfight. Christy and her bad guys were now stomping through the Roarasaur Forest and were heading straight for Nummy's. The Dummest Num On Earth started to lose his brain again and started to sing "The Ants Go Marching To Nummy's", but Blubbery Blurby stuffed a huge glob of Blubber down his throat to shut him up. Nummy had heard the Dummest Num On Earth and threw a Yum Food Bomb into the forest. As soon as the badguys noticed the bomb, they also noticed they were at Nummy's and they were surrounded by Numnums and Yummo Food.

"Marching Milde" is in all-caps due to the fact that the original version of this story gave the bad guys' names in different fonts when they were first mentioned, and his name happened to use a font that looked all-caps-ish anyway.  Speaking of Marching Milde, he's taken directly from Yoshi's Island -- the Clu-Clu Land Sea Urchins weren't the only random game reference appearing in this story.

The Dummest (sic) Num on Earth has a bit of a bizarre name, even ignoring the fact that "dumb" is misspelled in it.  In case it's not obvious... they're not even on Earth.  There generally aren't Numnums on Earth, barring the occasional visit, so of course he'd be the dumbest one if he actually did go to Earth.  Also, Blubbery Blurby apparently has the power to yank off hunks of his fat and use them as a weapon (or to shut up a moron who's randomly singing when they're trying to sneak up on someone, as the case may be.)

At that time they were ready to surrender (that is, until Nummy and Eddie started to use their tricky rubber yuck food trick).  As soon as the good guys were an inch away from the bad guys, Nummy and Eddie signaled the good guys to back away. Nummy came out of the restaurant, holding a plate of the [rubber] yuck food. Nummy and Eddie began to eat the rubber yuck food, and since it wasn't real yuck, it didn't even hurt them. And since it looked just like the real thing, most of the bad guys were tricked. "Hey Christy, these guys are eating yuck. They aren't good guys!" said Blubbery Blurby, the toughest bad guy there.

Much like how the dragons and various others couldn't eat yummy food back in these old stories, it was a known fact back then that good guys were physically incapable of eating anything with a high yuck content without getting sick.  By eating rubber yuckfood, they've tricked Christy's gang into thinking that they're not actually the good guys at all and that their boss either made a really stupid mistake or is intentionally having them fight against their allies, or something.

"Yeah, Christy!" said the other guys. As Blubbery and the other bad guys planned what they would do to Christy, Nummy, Eddie, Yummo Food and the numnums were escaping to the Numnum Club Hideout.  The good guys had just reached their hideout when the badguys found out a really bad thing to do to Christy. They squished her flat as an Eggo Waffle, then cut little square holes in her, then they shicked her, and finally they roasted her, put yuckfood syrup on her, and ate her like a pizza.

And the story ends, apparently with Christy being crushed into a waffle/pizza shape and eaten by her own minions.  Except she appears in another story later on (where she also dies) that pretty much has to take place later than this one, since it's about Killer Kirby being unsealed and escaping.  It's never actually explained how she randomly came back to life between stories -- it's possible I just forgot that she had died in the first place, or I'd decided that the older story didn't count anymore or something along those lines.

...and still, Girl #2 goes unmentioned.  I guess maybe they could be identical twins and the surviving one takes on Christy's name after she's killed, explaining away her mysterious "resurrection" in that later story. XD

Stuff I wrote when I was a kid -- How Julia Saved Fat Free Willy

This was one of the oldest things I wrote as a kid that's still around -- it was most likely written when I was in 3rd grade, and I can only think of maybe one or two stories that were probably written before this one (or at least, before the original version of this one -- it went through some revisions over the years back when I was in elementary school.)  As you can probably guess from the title, it's going to be pretty silly.

    One day Fat  Free Willy  was  sitting  outside talking  to Julia and Little Num.  Just then, the  Kirby King attacked! Following him  were Killer Kirby and 3 Bad Kirbys! Killer Kirby led the attack, and the 3 Bad Kirbys fiercely attacked Fat Free Willy  and  took  him away   to  Kirby World.   "Uh-oh, now I have to save Fat Free Willy all by  my self..."  thought  Julia.

Yep... "Fat Free Willy."  As in, like Free Willy (the orca whale) but... fat.  Apparently there was a (very brief) period of time when I wanted to add a fourth species to the Numnum/K'hyurbhi/Blurby trio and for some bizarre reason my 7-year-old self hovered around the idea of using land-dwelling orca whales for a while, calling them "Willys" after the whale from the movie.  And at the time, I would sometimes give characters names that were just their species and an adjective (such as Fat Num and Blubbery Blurby), so the first named member of the species was... "Fat Free Willy."

Also, this paragraph is a pretty good indication of the absurdly fast pace that my old stories usually took.  Stuff happened instantaneously with little or no detail -- it was just "this guy showed up and did this!", pretty much.  It gets a bit better at times (fight scenes in particular get expanded a bit in later stories), but for the most part all of my elementary-school era stories work like this.

As mentioned in my intro paragraph, this story went through a few revisions before getting to its current state.  One of those was changing the villain's species -- originally there was an evil Numnum King, but in the rewritten versions he's a Kirby King instead (and yeah, this was definitely from the time when K'hyurbhis were called "Kirbys" and looked like white-with-red-feet recolors of the character of the same name.)  Even later versions added Killer Kirby into the story, making him the son of the original Kirby King -- even though I hadn't even made him up yet when this was first written.

Foofoo and Coocoo chased  Julia until she was in the Kirby Desert, out of breath.  Just then, Roastado, the the king of Roastiso Island, came  to help her beat Coocoo and Foofoo.  He threw the Roaster Ball at Coocoo,   knocking him all the way to Africa.  Simba was watching them, and when he saw Foofoo approaching Roastado, he yelled out "Roastado! WATCH OUT!" Roastado heard him, spun around, and tossed his Roaster Ball straight at Foofoo. "They both have Roaster Balls!" shouted Coocoo.  "Ooooh-Noooo!" yelled Foofoo.  Both of them ran away from Julia and Roastado.

 Abruptly, Julia is chased by some of Killer Kirby's minions -- Foofoo and Coocoo, who this story depicts as two specific individuals with those names even though "Foofoo" and "Coocoo" have always been the names of entire species too.  In the original version, rather than mentioning the desert, Julia is said to have been chased all the way to "Kirby World," which the story was unclear as to whether it was an actual separate world or just another continent called a "world" -- much like how the different levels in Mario games are "worlds" despite being part of the same kingdom (that's probably the reason behind that oddball naming, actually, since I was definitely playing a whole lot of Mario games around the time this was written.)  As I'm writing this, I notice that the first paragraph actually still mentions "Kirby World" -- it's only after that when it switches over to referring to the Kirby Desert instead.  Even when I went back and edited these stories later on in the elementary school years, I tended to miss things that should've been changed here and there, which made things get a little jumbled up over time.

And speaking of Mario, in the original version of this story it was that Italian plumber who showed up here rather than Roastado, who I hadn't even made up yet at the time.  This also makes a little more sense of Coocoo's claim that both of their opponents are throwing fireballs -- in the original story the source of the fire was one of Mario's Fire Flowers, which he very well could have given to Julia as well.

The really impossible part of this, of course, is Coocoo somehow being knocked all the way to Africa by an attack.  Even though they are currently not on Earth at all.  And yet somehow Simba (yeah, from The Lion King) is able to be heard all the way from Africa to Nummorro.  I'm really not sure what the heck 7-year-old me was thinking when writing this part of the story.

Just then, Little Num saw a bottle of Pika Cola in the air.  He didn't know it, but the bottle was on Fishin' Lakitu's fishing-line.  Lakitu knew he would try to eat it.  Little Num bit onto the line, and Lakitu pulled him into his home in the clouds.

And yet another Mario reference.  Specifically, a Fishin' Lakitu, which only appeared in Super Mario World (which I'd recently played around this time.)  Also present is yet another case of something being changed in later revisions of the story -- originally the drink on the fishing line was Dr. Pepper, and later it may have been changed to a spoof name like "Dr. Parupoo"... but in the version of the story I currently have, it's Pika-Cola (the only drink made with real Pikachu) instead.  That means I was still going back and editing these stories as late as 1998 (after Pokémon became a thing in the United States), though only for minor changes like these as I'm pretty sure the older stories would look a bit different if I had rewritten them entirely by that point.

Also, I only just now noticed that Little Num was never stated to have followed Julia before this point in the story.  Whoops!

Just then she noticed the Killa Castle.  It was right in front of her.  She knew it was where the Kirby King kept Fat Free Willy.  But she didn't know how she would beat the King.  Just then, she saw Yuckow Food.  "Uh-oh, I have to beat Yuckow Food  and I forgot the honey and the yum!" thought Julia.  It's a good thing Julia brought her Cute Kirby Communicator, because just as Yuckow Food saw Julia, Supernum came, with his   hands full, carrying a pot of honey and a jar of yum.  "Just what I need right now." thought Julia.  "Give it to me, Supernum!" yelled Julia. "Here, take it, Julia." said Supernum.  Julia grabbed the honey and the yum, and dumped every last bit of  it onto the Food.  It melted into a quivering blob of jelly. "Thanks, Supernum.  You saved me from the Yuckow Food." said Julia.

Just like Coocoo and Foofoo before, here's a case of "species name as individual name" (which annoys the heck out of me now) with the Yuckow Food that suddenly attacks out of nowhere being called... Yuckow Food.  This part of the story actually references an even older story that I don't have a surviving copy of; it was simply titled Beat the Yuckow Food and involved elementary school kids trying to fight off a Yuckow Food that had invaded their cafeteria.  Eventually, after trying several things that failed horribly (like trying to get one of the kids to eat it), they manage to kill the thing by throwing honey-mustard on it, which works because yuck-based creatures can't stand yummy food.  I remember that it was supposed to be honey and mustard, but in the absence of the individual condiments they had to use already mixed honey-mustard instead (which still worked.)

Originally it was a pot of honey and a jar of mustard, but at some point I replaced the mention of mustard with Yum, a Nummorrian sauce/food made from the leaves of the yummaguri plant.  I guess I had decided that having mustard (which is made from an Earth-native plant) on another planet wouldn't make a whole lot of sense?  Another change was that Supernum didn't show up in the story at all originally -- in the earliest versions of this one, it was Eddie in his regular human form who showed up here, not Eddie in Supernum form.  That makes his inability to fight off a Yuckow Food without throwing yummy stuff at it make a lot more sense, along with his apparent inability to fight the Kirby King later on in the story.

"Let's go inside the Killa Castle!" said Supernum.  "Let's go." said Julia.  They went into the castle.  Just then, they saw Mario running out of the castle, toward the Yum Food Cafe.  "The Kirby King has your friends Fat Free Willy and Little Num!" he said.  "And he's got my Magic cards!" said Supernum.   Just then, they heard the Kirby King.  "Hahahahaha! I will eat the Nums and Willys, then I will get the Alligator Teacher out of jail, and finally, I will take over Nummorro! Then I will eat all of the Mortal Kombat 3 characters!" said the Kirby King.

And here's Mario's random (re)appearance, which seems completely out of nowhere in the current version since Mario hasn't appeared before now.  Also present is the reason for Eddie/Supernum's sudden involvement in the story -- the Kirby King has stolen his Magic: The Gathering cards... for some odd reason.  This was another thing that changed from one version to another; in the oldest version it was a Sega Genesis game system that had been stolen, only changing to Magic cards later on.  There's also the first and only mention of "Willys" as a species, a concept that was pretty much immediately dropped shortly after this story (though Fat Free Willy himself would eventually reappear in a sequel that I no longer have a copy of.)

And there's a random reference to another video game right there at the end -- the Kirby King threatening to eat all the Mortal Kombat 3 characters.  This story was originally written during the time before Mortal Kombat 3's release, and at the time I was mildly obsessed with the Mortal Kombat series so it occasionally was mentioned in stories I wrote back then (I still have a copy of another really old one that involves a Numnum and a K'hyurbhi playing one of the games in an arcade.)

There's also a reference to another story I wrote around this time (or maybe just an idea I had in my head that never made it into writing? I can't remember for sure) which ended with the Alligator Teacher -- main villain of the stuff I made up during 2nd grade -- being sent to jail, apparently on Nummorro (which would make sense as I doubt an ordinary Earth jail cell could hold her for long.)  Apparently the Kirby King planned on breaking her out for... some reason.  As with most things in these old stories, it's never explained why.

"We have to stop him!" said Julia.  "But how?" "We'll get Scaled Wurm out of my Magic cards!" said Supernum.  "But we've got to get your Magic cards out of the Killa Castle first!" said Julia.  "Did you say Magic cards?" said Mario, "I hate Magic cards!" he said.  "Hey, Mario!" yelled Supernum, "Taste the Yum!" he said as he threw the Yum into Mario's mouth.  Since it was a Magic Yum, it turned Mario into a Raging Mario Magic card.  "Oops! Wrong Yum!" said Supernum.

And here's a part that makes no sense at all after the change that replaced the Sega Genesis with Magic cards.  Mario hating Sega stuff was a reference to the "console wars" of the early/mid '90s where it was always Sega vs. Nintendo... and in the original version the Yum was a "Sega-Yum" which transformed him into a Game Gear system.  I'm not sure what throwing a Yum into Mario's mouth was supposed to accomplish to begin with, considering that the one that transforms him was the "wrong Yum"... but again, not a lot in these old stories makes sense.  There's a lot of others where stuffing Yum in a monster's mouth randomly kills it even if it's not a yucky-food-based one, for example.  I guess maybe eating something yummy would distract Mario from his random outburst about hating Sega (or Magic cards) and calm him down?

This and the part that follows also make a lot less sense with Supernum being present rather than regular Eddie.  The idea of a normal human being less capable of fighting the Kirby King than, say, Sonic or a wurm is understandable... putting Sonic or a wurm above the level of Supernum just because, on the other hand, seems a little off.

Then Supernum and Julia went to the top floor of the castle.  They saw the Magic cards.  But the Kirby King was guarding them! The Kirby King easily knocked Julia down, but Supernum was  ready for him.   When he lunged at Supernum, Supernum jumped for the cards.  "Oh no! Not Scaled Wurm!"  yelled the Kirby King.  Then Supernum pulled out the Green cards, and Scaled Wurm jumped out and ate the Kirby King.  Then Julia unlocked Fat Free Willy's cage and Little Num's cage.

Though, technically, with the lack of description in the story, it doesn't ever actually say that Supernum couldn't have fought the Kirby King on his own -- he just made getting his stolen stuff back a priority, and was perfectly able to dodge the Kirby King's attacks while Julia couldn't.  Obviously, Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't going to eat someone so in the original version where he appeared, he did a spinning buzzsaw-type attack that cut the Kirby King in half instead.

Also, this is the second time Little Num randomly shows up somewhere unexpectedly -- apparently the Fishin' Lakitu from before had been working for the Kirby King, though the part where it had appeared made it sound like it just dragged Little Num up into the clouds rather than taking him somewhere else.

When Killer Kirby heard about the Kirby King being killed, he was both mad and very sad.  The Kirby King was his dad, so Killer Kirby really wanted to get back at the goodguys.  He couldn't send a badguy, because Supernum would just use his Num Power attacks on it and destroy it. He also needed to find out who Supernum really was.  But he decided to wait until he had finished training with the Great Thingaroo before he attacked Nummorro again.

This part at the very end was added on later than the rest.  Actually, there's not one but two additions here -- the initial "Killer Kirby's reaction" part was added in what was probably the third revision of the story (after the Numnum King became a Kirby King, possibly in the same version that changed the Sega Genesis/Sonic to Magic cards/Scaled Wurm), while the mention of the "Great Thingaroo" at the end was added much later on, probably around the same time I changed the Dr. Pepper bottle to Pika-Cola.  I'm guessing that sometime in the late-'90s, I realized how weird it was for Killer Kirby to not actually make any attempt to go after Supernum and company at this point, so I added in "training with the Great Thingaroo" to explain that -- apparently he wasn't powerful enough to fight Supernum yet at this point, and only after completing his training did he become the near-unstoppable Killer Kirby seen in most other stories from the elementary school time period.